How cool is that?

How wonderful? How unexpected? I'm still a bit dizzy, giddy.

This evening, I read at the It's About Time series in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood. It was a festive evening, with a lot of open mike readers and a writer's craft talk. And the other featured reader was Joan Swift, with whom I read in 1995. So that was a kind of reunion.

But...

Before the reading began, I saw a really familiar woman arrive. She sat in front of me. I heard her first name. I wondered about her last name. When she stood up for open mike and introduced herself, I knew.

We hadn't seen each other in more than 25 years, and she was here. I met Pat Hurshell the first night of my first Nelson Bentley poetry workshop. It was my first venture into a poetry class since the workshop disaster of the previous fall. She was working on her doctorate. A few months later, she brought a poem to class that enchanted me. I used it as the inspiration to choreograph my modern dance senior project, and she came to a performance.

Over the years, I often thought about Pat and about the dance, and I wondered what she was doing.

But I had moved to New York for a few years, and I lost contact with a lot of people, including Pat.

Until tonight. It was about time. And I got to hear her read a poem.